


Down for Maintenance

by Gloomier



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bilbo is an idiot, Eventual Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Frodo is so done with the both of them, Humor, M/M, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Thorin Is Also An Idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6236500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloomier/pseuds/Gloomier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo's apartment building has a new maintenance guy, idiocy ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down for Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airebellah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airebellah/gifts).



> Written for [airebellah](http://airebellah.tumblr.com/) who wanted a Handyman Thorin AU for a while now.

“You have got to be kidding me!” 

The refrigerator groaned; the normally smooth whirring sputtered and raced for a moment before winding down to a painful stop.

Bilbo Baggins had terrible luck with house hold appliances, it translated over into general electronics too. Many of his family and friends joked that he was cursed, doomed to break any electronic device just by touching it, in very few cases just by looking at them.

His refrigerator joined the other casualties of his misfortune.

_It's not even a year old!_ He thought, sighing heavily as his shoulders sagged with disappointment.

“Probably a good thing,” Frodo supplied unhelpfully. “The milk was a little warm this morning and the ice cream in the freezer was all melted last night.”

Bilbo hoped that the appliance could be repaired, he wasn't exactly happy at the thought of buying another new refrigerator. He'd like to keep those purchases down to one every handful of years, thank you very much. There was another worry of course, the maintenance worker employed by his apartment building quit the week prior. It was a miracle that in that short span of time he hadn't broken the appliance then, the repairs would cost him a small fortune – those repairmen really knew how to bleed a person. 

He was a little skeptical of the new handyman, and though he'd learned to take everything Lobelia said with a grain of salt – because she enjoyed exaggerating everything – he'd only caught a quick glimpse of the man. What he did glean hardly told Bilbo anything about the man's experience, but it did enforce the 'don't listen to Lobelia ever' rule. Though Hamfast swore up and down that the man had magic hands, he had managed to patch the temperamental sprinkler system the gardener used up on the roof of their building the other day. 

“You'd better call soon, or everything in the fridge is gonna go bad,” Frodo said casually as he exited the kitchen, leaving his uncle to his appliance mourning.

Bilbo let loose another pitiful sigh. He didn't like the idea of having to visit the grocery store again, and certainly had no plans to order out; all the ingredients for supper were sitting in the dead appliance. 

Resigned to his fate, Bilbo made the call. 

He wouldn't admit that the fifteen minutes he had waited for the knock to come were agonizing, he didn't want to hear that his fridge couldn't be repaired. He hoped that the new maintenance man would actually show up – Bert, the previous handyman was lazy and not the most dependable of people. Bilbo continued to worry that the awful things that Lobelia had to say about the building's new resident storm cloud were true. Gandalf reassured him before their called ended that _'Mr. Oakenshield is very dependable and good at what he does'_. The old man hadn't given Bilbo a reason to doubt him ever, but then again, the apartment building wasn't very keen on change.

All thoughts on the matter were dashed away with the pounding on his door. Bilbo could already tell the man seemed impatient, _but at least he bothered to show up_.

Taking a deep breath, Bilbo opened his door – 

And all he could do was gape.

Upon first glance it was _definitely_ the maintenance guy. Bilbo recognized the long, thick black hair now bound with a hair tie at the nape of his neck from his earlier glimpse. Standing right next to him, there was an obvious height difference. Bilbo was always a little on the short side, not that he had a problem with his 5 feet 6 inches, and this man nearly towered over him. Where Bilbo was generously padded around his stomach and thighs – which he was quite proud of – the tall man was broad shoulders and muscle. 

“Baggins?” The maintenance man asked gruffly. 

The single syllable question earned the attention of Bilbo's eyes, now properly fixed on the other man's face. _Good god_... to his astonishment, the man had a very nice looking beard, cropped short with a light dusting of silver among the black. His eyes though – Bilbo couldn't quite get a hold on his thoughts.

He also apparently forgotten how to speak.

“I... Yes – B-Baggins. Bilbo Baggins,” and he'd forgotten how to think. Bilbo panicked, he could feel his face heat with embarrassment as he tried to regain a modicum of his dignity. The maintenance man had a very stern expression on his face, the no nonsense sort, and Bilbo had already made a blithering idiot of himself. _You are a Baggins, act like it!_

“What is it that you need fixed? I have other appointments to get to before the end of the day,” the maintenance man groused, obviously irritated.

“The refrigerator; Gandalf said that you could fix it,” Bilbo said optimistically, offering a little, placating smile.

The man narrowed his eyes, and by the looks of it he was holding his tongue. Bilbo could only assume that Gandalf was up to something, which wasn't out of the ordinary – he had a penchant for mischief after all. 

“Well?” the man said expectantly. “Are we going to stand here all afternoon, or are you going to show me where the kitchen is?”

Bilbo floundered a bit before opening his apartment door wider. “Yes, yes! Please come in, the kitchen is right over here.”

The overall experience was... _unique_ to say the least. Hamfast had been right when he said the handyman had magic hands. The temperature control for both compartments was temperamental, but easily righted, and the motor that circulated the coolant through the appliance _needed a bit of elbow grease_ – whatever the heck that meant. 

Bilbo couldn't care less; his fridge was fixed, dinner was saved, and while the maintenance man didn't speak at all after entering his apartment, Bilbo managed to figure out the man's last name – only thanks to the name sewn on his work shirt. 

He would be seeing a lot more of Mr. Oakenshield.

*

Frodo frequently stayed with Bilbo, it had become a second home to the teen. His parents were always traveling, sometimes for business more often for leisure, usually during the school year. Naturally he was used to Bilbo inexplicably breaking things; he often was witness to a lot of those breaks. To commemorate how much of a klutz his uncle was, Frodo purchased a white dry-erase board, writing 'days without incident' on it after the purchase and delivery to the apartment. 

Bilbo stared defiantly at the same dry-erase board as Frodo wiped away the number eight and drew a zero to replace it. 

He was livid. 

Mondays were his laundry day, no questions asked. He loved his washer and dryer to death, they were very good to him over the years. Yet it seemed inevitable that something would happen to them; another casualty to his curse. 

After washing a load of dirty clothes, throwing them in the dryer thereafter, he came to discover an hour later that they hadn't dried at all – Bilbo even double checked the settings. He was very tempted to yank his hair out in anger.

He wasn't keen on seeing Mr. Oakenshield so soon after his last debacle, and if Lobelia wasn't waggling her tongue too much about his curse, the maintenance man was sure to learn quick just how often these misfortunes happen in Bilbo's household. 

_At least there will be a reason to see him again_ , Bilbo's mind offered mutinously as he dialed the phone number.

The short wait between the call and the time it took for Mr. Oakenshield to show up was far less frightening than the first time. He now knew that the maintenance man could actually do his job, just showing up when he said he would was a big plus in Bilbo's book. Opening the door triggered déjà vu, and Bilbo couldn't resist just looking at the man – he was quite handsome. 

Mr. Oakenshield arched an eyebrow, Bilbo could tell he didn't want to be here by the way he held himself and the way he gripped his tool box. Bilbo wondered if the man always looked like he ate a spoonful of vinegar, if he bothered with smiling or laughing. Did he have another expression that wasn't angry constipation?

“What did you break this time?” 

Bilbo groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. The maintenance man already _knew_. “Did Lobelia tell you?” he groaned.

“A guess,” Mr. Oakenshield said curtly. 

Bilbo didn't believe him. 

“My dryer isn't drying, can you fix it?” Bilbo said, giving the other man a meaningful look.

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. The man shot him a lethal glare that spoke volumes of what he thought of Bilbo, chief among them was that Bilbo was an idiot to ask _that_ question. Instead of mucking things up even more, Bilbo opened his door once more to the maintenance man, leading him to the broken machine hidden in the little laundry room next to the kitchen. He watched intently as his dryer was coaxed out and unplugged. 

Mr. Oakenshield's work shirt was pulled up from where it was tucked into his dirty work jeans as he squatted to dig through his tool box, searching for a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Bilbo had a good vantage point in which he could see the muscles on the man's lower back, his skin stretched nicely over them. Oh how he'd love to see the rest of him too! 

Though he wasn't as sneaky as he thought, Frodo did catch him at his staring.

The heating element in his dryer burnt out; fixing it took twenty minutes – the man had to run down to his office and grab a spare element – and in that time Bilbo learned how easy it was to replace said heating element. He had also learned that Mr. Oakenshield wasn't very fond of small talk now that Bilbo was a bit more courageous to try.

“Thank you very much Mr – ?” 

“Thorin.”

“Thank you, Mr. Thorin. You saved another one of my appliances, I don't know what I would have done otherwise,” Bilbo inwardly cringed. Perhaps he was laying it on a bit thick, it wasn't as if Thorin saved his life. 

“Just Thorin, and I was merely doing my job,” Thorin huffed, brushing off the praise.

To Bilbo, Thorin seemed unused to receiving praise for his hard work. He called out one last thanks to which Thorin waved him off as he headed for the elevator.

“Did you enjoy the view, Uncle?” Frodo snickered as Bilbo closed the door.

“You're grounded.”

Frodo only laughed harder.

*

And for once in Bilbo's life, he couldn't have been more depressed that another appliance hadn't broken since his dryer was fixed; _that_ was a scary realization. 

Frodo caught him yelling at the oven after asking politely for it to break, so he'd have another reason to call Thorin up.

Of course when Bilbo didn't want something to break it was doomed to happen, but when he was practically kneeling before all the rest of the appliances in his apartment, begging them to break, not a single one of them would.

That's when the idea struck him.

Normally, Bilbo would throw the grease drippings left over from his cooking in the trash. Thankfully he had yet to get around to doing that, and he'd just added to it this morning after cooking breakfast. Along with his grease can, Bilbo also gathered old coffee grounds, two rolls of two-ply toilet paper, and leftover spaghetti from four nights ago. It was far more difficult to create a problem than it was for it to let it happen over time. It was certainly more disgusting than letting it happen the usual way.

He made large, greasy toilet paper balls, covering them generously in coffee grounds. He then expertly stuffed them down the drain of the kitchen sink, as far as he could manage. When all of the toilet paper balls were gone, he poured the remainder of the coffee grounds in the drain and added the entire container of spaghetti for good measure, making sure to turn on the faucet long enough to ensure that the noodles would expand. 

And then he waited, warning Frodo not use to the kitchen sink for anything.

The next day his drain was _hopelessly_ clogged and couldn't put off calling Thorin...

Thorin pried the 'u' shaped piece off the rest of the plumbing with his pipe wrench. One of Bilbo's homemade grease balls slid out of the now open-ended pipe and landed on the floor with a disgusting squelch. Thorin studied the inside of the pipe he held in his hand, using a finger to poke at the other grease balls stuck inside.

“Mr. Baggins, this pipe was intentionally clogged. You wouldn't happen to know anything about it, would you?” Thorin asked suspiciously as he ducked out from under the cupboard below the sink, shooting Bilbo a questioning look.

“Of course not! It might have been my nephew, playing a prank on me again,” Bilbo chuckled, praying to any who may be listening that Thorin didn't hear Frodo's indignant shout from the study.

So when Thorin asked Bilbo to turn on the water at his word, to make sure the pipe was screwed on tight, Bilbo might have _accidentally_ switched the tap on early, consequently soaking Thorin with water. 

Thorin had worn a plain white tee-shirt that day, and Bilbo couldn't complain as he was witness to a very wet handyman. The shirt was practically see through now and Bilbo had gotten a wonderful eyeful of the beautiful skin beneath the piece of clothing.

*

“Really, Uncle Bilbo?” Frodo asked, completely one-hundred percent exasperated.

“Yes really. The coffee machine has died. I'm certain Thorin can fix it!” Bilbo said, cheerfully ignorant of his silliness in this venture.

“Please, for the love of god, just stop,” Frodo pleaded. “You could just ask him out like a normal person!”

Bilbo's little schemes of breaking house hold appliances and utilities just to call on Thorin downward spiraled into absolutely ridiculous.

“Frodo, be quiet! You don't know the first thing about flirting. Your Uncle, on the other hand, has many years of experience!”

This time, Bilbo conveniently pulled the power cord from the base of his coffee machine. Last week he had trouble changing the batteries in the smoke detectors and a couple light bulbs, catching a generous glimpse at Thorin's midriff when the Handyman's shirt rode up while he was changing bulbs and batteries.

“Is that why you're pushing forty-one, alone, _and_ flirting with our building's maintenance guy?” Frodo retorted smugly, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly.

The day before the light bulb incident, Bilbo had tried to take a sledge hammer to the wall and claim that mice had made their home in it so Thorin could patch the holes in the wall. Thankfully, Frodo had stopped him, but the poor lad was at his wits end concerning his uncle.

Frodo made sure to answer the door when the tell tale knocking came. As ridiculous as his uncle was, Thorin began instigating it; Frodo figured that Thorin caught on to Bilbo's little charade shortly after the kitchen pipe clogging incident, when his uncle decided to clog the toilet next. 

He had been an unfortunate victim to his uncle's ogling of purposeful stretching from Mr. Oakenshield during the light bulb changing.

They were both idiots.

Frodo wrenched the door open and pinned Thorin with a fierce glare. “Fix this!” he pointed towards the kitchen. “Ask my uncle out, please! This has got to stop, he's driving me up the wall _and you are not helping_ ,” he whispered harshly.

The Handyman gaped at Frodo, his face reddened knowing he'd been caught. “You know?”

“Yes, I know,” Frodo huffed. “Now go!”

*

“Did you actually clog those drains?” Thorin asked, draping an arm around Bilbo's shoulders as they settled down on the couch after their first dinner date.

Bilbo choked on his mouth full of wine, trying not to spray it out of his mouth instead.


End file.
